


in too deep (and the wheels keep spinning round)

by Sir_Bedevere



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Angst, Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exhaustion, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Sleep, Sleep Deprivation, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22021225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sir_Bedevere/pseuds/Sir_Bedevere
Summary: Aziraphale waited, and when Crowley didn’t appear at the shop, he reached out to look for him and found him exactly where he had been when he'd checked up in the last sixty years or so. Asleep. Still asleep. Which meant that he had nothing to do with this.Crowley is sleeping through The Great War and Aziraphale is struggling alone.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 244





	in too deep (and the wheels keep spinning round)

**Author's Note:**

> This came about when I realised that the dates can work for Crowley's Big Nap to have coincided with World War One. It was never going to be a good time once I'd figured that out. 
> 
> Warning for World War One related things like blood and injuries.

When it first happened, when the duke was shot and the final piece fell into place, Aziraphale had - God help him - been pleased. Surely it meant that Crowley was awake at last, from his decades long sleep, and performing his ridiculous orders once more, and between them they would find a way to limit the damage of what was to come. 

But Aziraphale waited, and when Crowley didn’t appear at the shop, he reached out to look for him and found him exactly where he had been when Aziraphale had checked up in the last sixty years or so. Asleep. Still asleep. Which meant that he had nothing to do with this. In desperation, Aziraphale had tried to find if some other demon had been posted up, since Crowley was missing in action. There was nothing. No one. Which meant that - oh dear. It meant that whatever was going to happen was all the humans’ idea. 

**

They’d been circling and scrapping for almost a year before Heaven even noticed what was happening. Aziraphale was summoned to a meeting, to explain. He did his best, which probably wasn’t good enough. If he was honest, it wasn’t.

“So they’re killing each other?” Gabriel said. “What’s new?”

“Rather the scale of it, I’m afraid.” Aziraphale twisted his hands together. “And they have many new and horrible weapons.”

“And the others - nothing to do with it, you say?”

“No,” he swallowed, keeping thoughts of Crowley from his mind. “Nothing.”

“Well then, let it run its course,” Michael said, picking at her fingernails. “It always does in the end.”

“But-” Oh dear. Aziraphale folded his hands behind his back to keep from wringing them further. He hadn’t conveyed the seriousness at all.

“No but. Let them get on with it. And Aziraphale?”

“Yes, Michael?”

“No miracles. We will know.”

**

The front is - well, Aziraphale has seen a lot of war in his time. War and humans go hand in hand it seems, from small skirmishes to armies facing one another across the plains, but he’s never seen anything like this. This is not a war, because no one is winning, and no one has been winning for years. This is a lot of men, tired and hungry and desperate men, shoved into some holes in the ground, taking shots at one another whilst the leaders are miles away, telling them to shoot better. Back in the day, the leaders were out at the front, swinging their swords first. That is rather why he thinks they are called ‘leaders’. Even in the worst days of the worst war he’s ever fought in - the heavenly war, the civil war that ripped the host apart - Aziraphale could be sure of one thing. Gabriel and Michael and Uriel fighting wherever the battle was hardest. And on the other side, Lucifer and the angel that was once Raphael, fighting there too. 

The humans have done something very clever here, inventing a battlefield that no one of consequence will even have to stand on, and calling what is happening glory. 

This isn’t glory. This is the end of the world.

Aziraphale doesn’t know how the humans will ever come back from this. 

**

He’s taken mostly to wandering the corridors of the hospitals, for the last year or so. He tried being out at the front for a long time, sometimes as a chaplain, sometimes a cook, sometimes a stretcher bearer. Someone even taught him how to drive an ambulance, although Aziraphale found that he did not care for the experience. He doubts he will ever ride in a vehicle again. Too fast. But he didn’t feel he was doing much good, out in the trenches. He could try and make the men around him peaceful, but he wasn’t allowed to perform any miracles, and so it became hard to watch, knowing the likely fate of the men around him.

_Yes, Heaven has been very clear about the miracles._

So he roams the hospitals, on both sides, and meets the men who have already confronted their fates head on, and tries to give them peace. But he is just one angel, and this is a bloody big war.

**

Aziraphale has never slept very much. It’s a human habit that he never picked up. The only one, really. Sleeping has always been Crowley’s forte. But that has always been fair, because Crowley doesn’t eat like Aziraphale does. They each are surely allowed one foible. 

Only now, it doesn’t seem very fair at all, because Crowley is asleep and Aziraphale is - he’s here. 

And he’d give anything to be able to forget for a while. 

**

“You!” the doctor shouts. “Over here, quick!”

Aziraphale is covered in blood already, from a young man who came in from an ambulance with half a leg. He’d been hurrying away to miracle himself clean, but the doctor’s voice is frantic, so he turns back.

Two nurses are trying to pin down a soldier who is convulsing violently, almost throwing himself off the bed as he screams and screams. The doctor is trying to get a needle into him but he can’t possibly whilst the man is like this. Aziraphale circles the bed and puts his whole weight on the man’s chest and arms as the nurses move to hold his legs. In the guise of holding him, he puts his lips to the man’s ear and whispers into it, trying to calm him with his presence. Whether it is that or his brute strength that works, the man goes still enough that the doctor can get the syringe into him, and he goes calm as he slips into sleep. 

“Thank you,” the sister gasps, her hand on Aziraphale’s arm. “Poor bugger. Reckon he’s lost his mind.”

The man is not young, with grey hair at his temples and deep lines around his eyes. Laughter lines. This is a man who used to laugh, and Aziraphale feels something tug inside his chest. He reaches out and lays a hand on the man’s brow. Even if he was allowed to use his healing powers, there would be nothing he could do here. The delicate human body is not a challenge, but the delicate human mind - well, that’s another matter. So he soothes him as best he can, and then he has to walk away. 

He just has to walk away.

**

When Crowley finally turns up, Aziraphale is on his knees. Exhausted. Strung out, like he’s a tapestry and someone is picking at his threads, unravelling him one by one. There’s so much blood. Who knew that humans had so much blood in them. Who knew that so much of it could get on his hands. 

Crowley has been far from his thoughts for a while now, because he cannot bear to think of him. Crowley was not built for battle. Aziraphale is a soldier, _used to be a soldier_ and he should be used to this. But Crowley has always been soft at the sight of human suffering, at least the suffering that ends like this. If he was here - it does not bear thinking about. 

But that doesn’t mean that somewhere deep inside, a part of him wishes the demon was at his side.

Aziraphale is wandering the corridors of a hospital somewhere in Belgium. It is the middle of the night and he should not be out of his room, but lately the four walls have been closing in around him as he sits on his bed and tries to read, so he walks. None of the nurses or other orderlies bother him, for the most part, because they understand. At least he thinks they do, because nobody talks about it.

Up ahead, in a dimly lit corridor, he sees a flash of red hair and his heart skips. He speeds up, tells himself it can’t be, that he’s imagining things now, that he just wants it too much, and as he rounds the corner too fast he runs straight into Crowley. 

_Crowley._

“Angel!” Crowley says, holding him at arm’s length. “Finally. Been looking for you.”

Crowley is dressed in a sergeant’s uniform, hair combed neatly against his head, and when he lifts his sunglasses to look at Aziraphale’s face with those dear, dear eyes, something snaps.

“Angel!” Crowley says again, as Aziraphale slumps against the wall. It’s cool through his uniform shirt and he lets it support him as he slides down to the floor, buries his face in his hands. 

_Crowley is here._

He feels hands on his shoulders but he doesn’t look up, can’t look up. His tears are hot against his palms and Crowley has never seen him cry, not in all these years, decades, millenia. 

A body slides down next to his. Fingers wrapped around his wrists. It’s too public here. Anyone could come round the corner, anyone could find them. With a click, Aziraphale sends them both to his room. 

“Aziraphale? What’s happening? What are the humans up to, huh?”

Crowley’s voice is high, uncertain, but he’s let go of Aziraphale’s wrists. Is that a blessing or a mercy? He doesn’t know. 

He can’t answer. Not around the lump in his throat, the sobs that rack him. He can’t answer but maybe that’s all Crowley needs, because the next thing he feels is a glass being pushed into his hands. He catches a whiff. Whisky, neat. Desperate, he sucks it down. A clink of a bottle as Crowley refills it. Another drink. 

_He’s not alone._

“You should have woken me up, angel. I think this counts as an emergency, don’t you? None of my lot seem to be involved but I’ve not even been down to find out yet. First thing I did when I woke up and read the headlines was pop over to find you. Cos I knew you’d be here. And I was right. Knew I’d find you in the middle of it.”

When Crowley is nervous, he talks. He talks and talks, and he is talking and talking now, but Aziraphale doesn’t mind. He’s missed his voice. Sixty years didn’t seem so long without him, not compared to how they’ve been in the past, but three years when the humans are doing this to each other was too much. Much too long. 

“Can’t feel much influence from your lot either though.” Crowley is still talking and now his hands are back on Aziraphale’s shoulders, squeezing them tightly. It feels good. It feels like the only thing stopping him falling apart. 

“Only one I can feel at all is you. You’re all over this place. Angelic beacon in the middle of a bloody nightmare. No wonder everyone is sleeping peacefully.”

Aziraphale nods. His cheeks are sticky and his throat hurts, but he can nod now. Crowley’s squeezing turns into a gentle hand on his head, fingers barely curling in his hair, and Aziraphale’s heart tries to crawl out of his mouth when Crowley says, “Angel, you must be _exhausted._ ”

“I am,” Aziraphale rasps, and now he can finally look up to see Crowley’s yellow eyes gazing down at him. “Exhausted. I didn’t know I could be. Even in the days - even during the Black Death, even during the plagues. Never been quite this tired, dear boy.”

The room is small and Crowley is looming over him, but for the first time it doesn’t feel like a prison. It feels safe. 

“Come on, angel,” Crowley says, pulling him to his feet. “We can talk about this in the morning. I need you to catch me up.”

“Yes, yes of course. Do you need to rest?”

“Me? Just woke up from a seventy year nap. Feeling fresh as a - fresh thing. But you need to lay down.”

“I don’t sleep,” Aziraphale shook his head. “You know that.”

“Will you try?”

“I _can’t_ , my dear. I really have tried this past few years.”

Crowley smiles, shrugs off his uniform jacket, slips off his boots. He flicks his hand and locks the door. Aziraphale watches him through his stinging eyes. 

“Have one more go, angel. For me.”

_For me. As though Aziraphale wouldn’t try to do anything - anything - Crowley asked of him._

“I’ll guard you,” Crowley says, taking his wrist gingerly and leading him to the bed. “Whatever it is you’re pouring into this place, I’ll match it. I’ll try. I’ll hold the reigns till the morning, okay? Just please, please. Lay down. Close your eyes.”

Crowley’s voice is enchanting. Gentle and soft and so, so kind. He’s so kind. Aziraphale trusts him with his heart and isn’t that a strange thing. He’s so glad that he’s here. 

So Aziraphale lays down, lets Crowley pull the blankets over him. There’s a scrape as Crowley brings a chair over to the bedside and flops into it, picking up Aziraphale’s book from the bedside table. Just sonnets, Shakespeare, because even reading has been too hard. 

“I’ve got them, angel,” Crowley murmurs, and Aziraphale feels a force that is not his own creeping over the hospital, feels the burden ease, feels his shoulders loosen up. He puts his head on the pillow.

“That’s it,” Crowley soothes, and he puts his hand carefully on Aziraphale’s head once more, his thumb brushing over his forehead. It should be electric, the touch, but this time it is just warm. 

“Close your eyes,” Crowley brushes his thumb down over Aziraphale’s eyes, eases the eyelids closed with his words and his feather light touch. “I’ll be here in the morning.”

And he _trusts_ him, _believes_ him.

Crowley is here now, and - _thank God, thank God_ \- Aziraphale is not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from I Need Some Sleep by The Eels


End file.
